The stunning conclusion to Lili’s harrowing predicament is as satisfying as I could hope for. DanMachi nearly falls victim to some overused deus ex machina tropes, skating that fine line between exciting and predictable, but ultimately ties things up nicely while maintaining most of the things I’ve been praising the series for. What really makes this episode work, for me, is the exposition at the beginning. Rather than providing this information right when we meet Lili, it’s postponed several episodes until now.

This is effective because it gives us time to develop our own opinion of Lili as a character, while keeping her backstory fresh in our memory during her most dire moment. As we could’ve guessed, Lili has been forced to make money for the Soma Familia by any means necessary, and in her case, that meant stealing from adventurers. What we didn’t know, however, was that whenever Lili attempted to leave the Soma Familia, they would come track her down and cause harm to whoever she was with.

Long story short, Bell saves the day and forgives Lili despite her openly stealing from him (and almost killing him, too). When asked why he saved her, we get a really great Zidane Tribal from Final Fantasy IX moment in which Bell simply says he saved her because she’s her. Zidane’s character quote is “You don’t need a reason to help people,” which is a philosophy that I think Bell shares. You don’t need a reason to help someone other than it’s the right thing to do. Even though Lili went out of her way to steal from Bell, he looks past that and sees someone who needs help.

Even if it is cheap and predictable, the setup behind Bell’s rescue is done in such a way that I was practically begging Bell to save her. It’s just that Lili’s situation is so sad and brutal that I couldn’t bare seeing her hurt anymore, and I think it’s less that she’s a cute girl and more that the guys terrorizing her are a bunch of d-bags. Male or female, it’s hard to watch someone who’s physically weak being brutally attacked and left for dead. As I predicted, Lili owns up to all of her crimes, even ones that we never got to see like her splitting the money unevenly.

Outside of the surprisingly emotional ordeal with Lili, we see more of Aiz’s continuing adventure to meet Bell in a normal circumstance. Unfortunately for her, that doesn’t happen this episode, and she actually ends up saving Bell for the third time, though unbeknownst to him. I’m very excited to see what happens next episode, given that it will be all about Aiz.